Thursday, August 9, 2007

The Race to be First

In the race to hold the first presidential primary/caucus in the nation in the 2008 election, South Carolina GOP Chair Katon Dawson announced today that he has moved his state's primary up to January 19th. Previously, the primary was scheduled for January 29th. Dawson made the announcement in New Hampshire, traditionally the site of the nation's first primary, following the Iowa caucuses.

In response to this, Iowa Governor Chet Culver recommitted his state to being first in tha nation, which means the caucuses could be held in Iowa in late December. In a statement, Culver said:

“All I can tell you is that as governor, I’ll do everything in my power to
make sure Iowa has the first caucus in the nation. I’m confident that we
will... We will do whatever we have to do to protect Iowa,” Culver said. I
don’t think as long as we give appropriate notice and timing that the date
matters a whole lot. We just need to get it set.”

Many political analysts note that if Iowa does move its causcus to December, it will lose some of its impact as the media story following it will not be as strong. With each of the candidates polling differently in each of these states, the date of each primary and caucus truly will have a huge impact on the nominating process.

Stay tuned to RealRepublicanMajority.org for more on this developing story.

2 comments:

Imagine1122 said...

Can someone explain to me what the big race to be first is?

Anonymous said...

Sarah:
The race is all about history and precedent but, frankly not much more these days. I find it pretty funny that the nice folks in South Carolina actually think pushing up their primary date will have a major impact on the 2008 elections. Apparently they don't think to highly of the educated American electorate who is far far above these kinds of "stunts".